News
Seattle can keep Bertha the borer. Portland regional officials are backing away from plans to drill a tunnel under Oregon Health & Science University to run a light-rail line to Tualatin.Staffers for regional planning agency Metro working on plans for new light-rail or rapid bus line in Southwest Portland have recommended abandoning plans for a light-rail tunnel with MAX stops underneath Marquam ...
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Government officials trying to build an Oregon Convention Center hotel have offered to give project opponent Gordon Sondland a parking lot in order to get him to drop three lawsuits against the project.Sondland, CEO of Provenance Hotels, has been battling a headquarters hotel at the convention center for a decade. But he's now negotiating with Metro to let the project proceed.WW reported Wednesday ...
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The Oregonian has lost another state politics reporter. Yuxing Zheng is leaving the paper to work as a spokeswoman for Metro.Zheng, 29, covered the state legislature and Gov. John Kitzhaber's office. Metro, the regional planning agency, internally announced Zheng's hiring this morning as "the new content and storytelling guru for Metro’s parks, trails and natural areas work."The departure of Zheng ...
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It’s a beastly time at the state’s most popular tourist attraction. These political animals will determine its future.

Cover Story
To lose an orangutan was a setback.
But to lose the
orangutan, a zoo director, the chief veterinarian and the support of
keepers—that’s a sign of serious trouble at the Oregon Zoo.
Kutai,
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Metro President Tom Hughes today took an aggressive step to move forward with development of a $200 million Hyatt Hotel adjacent to the Oregon Convention Center. The three government agencies involved in the project—the City of Portland, Multnomah County and Metro—all approved it last year. But opponents, led by downtown hotelier Gordon Sondland, have attempted to block the deal—first at the ...
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Seven years after its $57 million construction, the Portland Aerial Tram faces a perhaps enviable problem: It's too crowded at rush hour to be included in future transit planning."It's near capacity during rush hour right now," says Malu Wilkinson, principal regional planner for Metro. "So adding more people that need to use that tram would be a challenge."The conundrum, first reported by Nick Christensen ...
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Former Metro Council President David Bragdon was never shy about voicing his frustration with Oregon's endless planning gridlock. As chief of the Portland area's regional planning agency, Bragdon chafed at what he called the "paralysis by analysis" of Oregon's public process.He went from here to a gig in New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration (he was director of long-term planning, ...
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The decades-in-discussion Oregon Convention Center headquarters hotel is sliding into the future, Metro says in an internal report."Negotiations between Metro and a developer proposing to build a hotel near the Oregon Convention Center are likely to carry into 2014, pushing back the project's timeline by a few months," Metro's in-house news editor Nick Christensen writes. All three branches of ...
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Metro’s $1.4 million study yields another committee.

News Stories
When Tom Hughes took over as Metro president three years
ago, he promised to put the regional government to work creating jobs
for the Portland area.
To be sure, Hughes
has pushed major constr
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